And once again, braaaaaaaaaaains…

October 31, 2013, 10:27 PM

One of the things I enjoy about Silver Spring is the annual zombie walk. Last year’s zombie event was kind of ho-hum, considering that, for a number of reasons, it wasn’t a formal zombie walk, but rather, more a night for people to go out and drink while dressed up as zombies. The zombie walk in 2011, which followed the usual model of a meetup, a walk, and then a movie, was much more fun. This year’s zombie event followed the 2011 model, since as I believe that everyone realized that zombies without a walk was not nearly as fun (even if a lot of it was due to circumstances outside the organizers’ control).

That said, I had a lot of fun, as expected. The zombie costumes were pretty gruesome, and there were also a few zombie hunters out there, too. The surprise of the night, though, was that the zombie walk was rerouted at the last minute. Turns out that someone made a bomb threat at the Majestic, a movie theater at the corner of Ellsworth Drive and Fenton Street in Silver Spring. The theater was evacuated, and since it was along the zombie walk’s route, the undead needed to be rerouted, which took the walk further east than originally planned, and approached the AFI Silver Theater, where a horror movie would be shown, from the east rather than from the west.

I also discovered that, in the hands of the right person, clowns can be made to look very scary. I had always laughed about the “clowns are scary” bit, but some of the people playing undead clowns on this particular evening created fuel for nightmares. And yes, you’re going to see them.

And here they are:

After seeing these two, I don’t think I can ever go to sleep again. After all, realize that working with the photo of the snake in the Natural Bridge Journal entry gave me a bad dream the night after that went up. These are some scary looking clowns. Well done.

I loved the body paint on this green zombie, how she did her hands and everything. She made one guilty admission: she didn’t do the back of her neck, and therefore had to hide it with her hair and the top of her hoodie.

I love a (fake) gunshot wound done well. You can really imagine that something went right through in this case.

These two girls, whom I remembered from last year, were dressed up as characters from The Shining this time around. They would come up to people and say, in unison, “Come play with us, forever and ever and ever,” with the blank expressions that you see here (more nightmare fuel!).

Zombie Snow White made an encore appearance, though with different makeup this time around.

Yes, even the undead need their coffee to be at their best.

I liked the use of the wheelbarrow here.

Making brains from food items was also popular:

A brain made out of watermelon (who would have thought!).

Gelatin mold brain.

Zombie barista and zombie bride.

Zombie Express hawkers. This was a real hoot, as they not only did the vest, but they also dummied up the cover of an Express issue.

Again, the innocent face of a child, when coupled with zombie makeup, is really creepy.

Photobomb!

Zombie Power Ranger, and zombie Charlie Chaplin.

You will never guess what this person used to make her teeth look like this. It’s lipstick. Yes, lipstick. She told me that she took a tube of lipstick that for whatever reason was unusable (she called it “stale”) and rubbed it on her teeth.

And then there was this guy. He was probably the best actor of the bunch, and had fake blood (which he later said on Facebook was mint flavored) constantly coming out of his mouth. My only complaint about him was that he wouldn’t stop walking for photos, and because of the stream of fake blood coming out of his mouth, I didn’t want to get too close to him.

And then there were zombie hunters:

So there you have it! The 2013 Silver Spring Zombie Walk was a tremendous amount of fun. Looking forward to next year’s walk already. And I hope that everyone had a fun Halloween tonight!